All the Important Details

A Craft Entry

Hey friends,

I haven’t been writing much, outside of this newsletter, and it makes me sad. I’m a little stalled, a little trepidatious, which, looking back, is a pretty normal state for me when I’m between projects. I tend to overthink things (though this book helps) and/or focus on making A Grand Plan TM that will (not) solve all my productivity and momentum problems. Sigh. Sometimes you have to go through the things you know you need to go through to get to the other side.

But also, I’ve been thinking about craft. My craft. I’ve always told myself I’m a minimalist, when it comes to fiction writing. I’m sure I’ve tweeted a bunch of times that I, as a reader and agent, don’t care what kind of wood that chair/table/desk/curio cabinet is made out of when I read a story or novel. (It’s always seems to be “cherry wood” btw.) I did SO much work on Raymond Carver in grad school that sparse sentences and light adjectives austerity just rubbed off, I reasoned. (Ignoring the fact that I also studied a lot of Faulkner, who is not a minimalist by any stretch of the imagination. So, yanno. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

But. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I need more descriptions in my work.

I think, on top of my personal stylistic preference for minimalism, this is a reaction to a lot of unformed and unedited writing I see that heaps on the descriptors, especially in the beginning of a story. Every hair color is noted. Every brand of shoe revealed. Every (relevant, revealing) book on the shelf listed, the exact color of the main character’s coffee, their skin tone (hopefully not using the same adjectives!! 😬😬😬), and, of course, their exact morning routine and how they look in the mirror first thing. It’s so common it’s become cliche. Not to mention boring. It’s natural to start a story at the “beginning,” which some writers interpret as “the morning.” It’s natural to want to tell the reader what your character looks like first thing. Are their successful books that start this way? I’m sure. But just because it works sometimes and it makes some kind of sense to do it, doesn’t mean it’s always useful, artful, or necessary.

First pages are critical to both world building (even if it’s not science fiction or fantasy) and seducing the reader that, I feel, there’s no room to waste time on superfluous details. No one cares what brand of shoes your character is wearing! Hair color is probably not that important on page 1, either! I care so much more about what a character is doing rather than what they look like on the first pages that I think I’m becoming overly sensitive to any non-essential (to me) description before, say, page 3.

That doesn’t mean I’m right about this, though. And it’s possible I’ve taken it too far in my writing.

I think I need to tell readers more about my characters’ looks, the kinds of books on their shelves (without it ~~*~*~meaning~*~*~~ too much), the bag they carry, the coat they wear, the neighborhoods they inhabit. I think I’ve avoided describing things because I am not fully picturing the world myself. Or it is so familiar to me because I’ve inhabited it in my brain or in reality for so long that it feels rote, boring, understood. I’ve always grappled with making sure I put on the page the things I know in my head that the reader may not, and this might be one of those things, too.

I know I’ve encouraged writers not to micromanage the “set design” of their scenes and books, and to let the reader fill in the non-essential blanks. I’ve said to paint the scene with single drops of color and detail, and let the reader imagine the rest. If I tell you the murder happened in a room with red velvet curtains and a dark mahogany mantle carved in an imposing gothic style, then you can probably guess the rest of the room is filled with oil paintings of long-dead people or hunting parties, big, heavy furniture, thick carpet or rugs, and a roaring fire. Does it matter if the fire is lit or not? Maybe. But if it was that important to know, I would have mentioned it, and if I don’t mention it, it doesn’t matter to me, as the writer, if you imagine the fireplace lit or not.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s beneficial to describe the furniture and paintings and carpet (not rugs in that scene) and fireplaces in my work. Or maybe I need 12% more of it, and not 25%. Maybe my lack of descriptions, or dearth of descriptions, is making my scenes colorless, my characters flatter, everything less alive. I don’t know. The only cure here, of course, is writing. Trying it out. Putting some stuff in and taking some of it out (and maybe putting it back in). Writing and reading and writing and reading. I am not going to know for sure if one way is better than the other, but I can try some stuff and see what I like, what feels better, and go from there.

It’s always good to take a step back and question how you’ve always done things. Don’t let it throw you into an anxiety spiral. There’s no one right way to write. There’s no single thing you can fix that will unlock whatever publishing door you’re up against. But if you never try something different, you’ll never grow as a writer.

Descriptively yours xoxoxoxoxo,

Kate